Fostering AI Innovation and Enterprise Readiness with Bharti Patel

In this episode of Keep Moving Forward, host Caleb Brown is joined by Bharti Patel, Senior Vice President and Head of Engineering at Hitachi. Bharti takes us on a journey through her remarkable career, from being a Java developer at IBM India during the early days of object-oriented programming to leading cutting-edge enterprise AI strategies at Hitachi.

Bharti’s leadership is guided by three core principles: creating exceptional customer experiences, driving innovation through quality, and empowering teams to unleash their full potential. Throughout this episode, she shares how she builds thriving teams, fosters a culture of innovation, and prepares organizations for the future of data infrastructure and generative AI.

2025-02-21  • 37 min

Bharti Patel on Enterprise Readiness and Gen AI

Keep Moving Forward

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Creating a Culture of Innovation

For Bharti, innovation thrives in an environment where people feel safe to take risks, express bold ideas, and learn from their mistakes.  “You’ve got to create that environment where people feel motivated to express themselves, and they're not afraid,” she says. “You need to create an environment where people are able to take some risk, they are able to think out of the box, and they are ready to fail fast, fail early, and learn from [their] mistakes.” 

Bharti emphasizes the importance of giving team members freedom to experiment and encouraging them to think like startup founders. By fostering a culture of psychological safety, her teams consistently produce extraordinary results.

Enterprise AI Readiness: Turning Hype Into Reality

Generative AI represents a transformative opportunity, but Bharti cautions against treating it as a one-size-fits-all solution. “It's one thing to write a poem using Gen AI,” she says. “But it's another to use it for mission critical applications… How do you ground them to produce 100% accuracy? That's something needed in the enterprise world.” She cautions enterprises to consider other features like governance, traceability, scalability, security, cost, and carbon footprint before delving into AI.

At Hitachi, Bharti leads efforts to build AI infrastructure that is neutral, scalable, and designed for diverse industries. Her strategy focuses on enabling businesses to derive insights from data without unnecessary movement—a critical consideration in today’s hybrid world.

Balancing Skills and Attitudes

In tech teams, Bharti believes technical excellence should never be overlooked in favor of softer skills. She explains that she had someone on her team who worked just two hours a day, but his code was exceptional — better than someone working 10 hours. “I encouraged that… because I think that was helping. In fact, I used his approach to ask others to enhance their skills to be more productive.”

While she values collaboration and communication, Bharti stresses the importance of respecting technical talent, even when soft skills aren’t a strong suit. Her philosophy ensures that the brilliance of engineers is harnessed while coaching them to thrive in team environments.

Transcript

Bharti Patel:
You’ve got to create that environment where people feel motivated to express themselves, motivate to go beyond the normal course. And they are not afraid. They're not afraid because it means when you kind of make when you are trying to do it possible you there is you are likely to make mistakes. So it's not that if someone makes a mistake, then you throw them under the bus. You got to support them, and you you need to give them that confidence. And actually, you need to create an environment where people are able to take some risk, they are able to think out of the box, and they are ready to fail fast, fail early, and learn from the mistakes. 

Caleb Brown:
Hey everyone, and welcome to Keep Moving Forward, the podcast from X-Team for tech professionals who are passionate about growth, leadership, and innovation.

I'm your host, Caleb Brown, and in each episode, we'll dive into candid conversations with the tech industry's brightest minds—seasoned leaders, forward-thinking engineers, and visionary experts.
Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Bharti Patel, Senior Vice President, Head of Engineering at Hitachi. Bharti’s career spans decades of innovation, starting as a Java developer in the early days of IBM India to leading cutting-edge strategies in artificial intelligence, data management, and enterprise readiness.

What sets Bharti apart is her unwavering focus on three guiding principles: creating exceptional customer experiences, driving innovation through quality, and unleashing the full potential of her teams. From her experience with scaling operations to navigating the challenges of leading Gen AI strategies at Hitachi, her journey is packed with insights for anyone passionate about technology and leadership.

In this episode, Bharti shares how she fosters a culture of innovation, approaches enterprise AI readiness, and the lessons she's learned about balancing technical skills with human connection. Whether you're intrigued by leadership evolution, AI innovation, or empowering teams to achieve extraordinary results, you’re in for a thought-provoking discussion.

Ready to dive in? Let’s get started!

Delighted to be joined by Bharti Patel, thank you so much for being here.
 
Bharti Patel:
Hey. Thank you, Caleb, it's my pleasure to join you here.
 
Caleb Brown:
Excellent. Yeah. And I mean, Bharti, you are a seasoned technology leader, currently Senior Vice President, head of engineering at Hitachi. I just wanted to kick things off kind of my first question, really, with just walking us through your career journey, you know, I know from looking kind of at your resume, at your LinkedIn, you know, starting the early days as a Java developer at IBM, India, I'd love to just have you walk us through that whole journey from then to now.
 
Bharti Patel:
I think that's a great question. And before I get started on my journey, I think I would like to throw light on what's important to me, because I've been in the industry for a long time, and I have done different kinds of things. I've been fortunate enough to work with very talented people, and also always has an opportunity to be at the forefront of the technology, am whatever technology and technology was new at a certain point in time. 

So I think there are three guiding principles for me. Number one is creating exceptional experiences for our customers. So whether it's product, whether it's services, something that delights the customer, is very important to me. Second thing that's important to me is innovation that you can drive to innovation and quality that you can drive in products and services and solutions to make the life of the customers easy again, and once you do that, it takes care of their top and the bottom line, eventually resulting in your own top and the bottom line. And last, but not the least, is the people, because in technology, it's about technical people, it's about they make it happen. So how do you they come in different forms, different skill set, and how do you unleash their full potential to produce extraordinary results. 

Okay, so, yeah, I started my own journey with IBM India, and after graduating from the premier institutes in India, and I that time Java was had just come out, so I had the opportunity to work on the very first, Java means specifications. And in fact, just right after joining IBM, India, I worked at one of our big labs at IBM Hursley in UK. So that that was really, that was really an, really an experience, because Java, as you know, at that time, it was the object oriented language. So means, you, you that was a kind of paradigm shift in terms of how the software was written. So great opportunity there. Again. 

After that, I had the in India, I spent a little more time. In fact, I was when I joined IBM India, there were probably about 40 people in the lab, and very few, maybe in hundreds in overall IBM India, and maybe now there are 100,000 or more people in India. So in at the time, in like in 1996 offshoring was not, no, was not a known concept. But India always had talent. So it was my role to to create, create that extraordinary team. And again, it was a very young team. Our every age, probably was around, maybe below 25 but then they were very talented people. So how do you kind of excite them to produce extraordinary results? And also, I work with the labs across the world, like in labs, to create, to ensure that they had the right mentors assigned. And I had the opportunity to grow that group. 

Actually, I was the one who created Webster lab in India, and I had the opportunity to grow it from three to about 600 people, about less than five to six years I worked for, I mean, for a long time, and I thought it was time to see what is outside. What does the outside world look like? And in fact, during COVID, I joined a company called Aaron Corporation, and it was, it's an air purifier company, and they're very, they're very they focus on advanced technology, and they give lifelong warranty on the products, so no, no question asked. Just imagine that. And very profitable company too, but again, focus on technology. So I led the digital transformation there. And IoT development means they were there for a long time. They had sensors going in their air purifiers, but they were not able to make use of it. So we did that. We also steam lined their e commerce. Are using boomy Dell Boomi, and in fact, they had the very first, very first brick and mortar presence during my time over there. And that was only made possible because we had standardized architecture around boomy. Again. 

Another thing to keep in mind, it was 100 percent e-commerce company. So everything was through E commerce, and it was B to C. But I also started the B to B there, where we were able to sell 1000s of purifiers during COVID to schools to offices, and so that they could safely run their their operations. So that was a really great experience. After that, I think that was very again, like working, it's one thing to work for a very big corporation like IBM, and I did different things there, but to even create same kind of results with a very small workforce and the limited resources the small company. I learned a lot in the process. Then Hitachi came to me, and I joined Hitachi. I joined to lead the data management and storage software portfolio here. And during my course in time here, I was also asked to lead Gen AI first for overall Hitachi. And in fact, I think that's something I'm very passionate about. Again, given my passion for innovation, about how do you really simply I defined here the three prong strategy, which was, we'll create the best infrastructure that our customers can develop their AI applications on. Then the second thing is, we would also create industry solutions on top of this infrastructure. And third thing, we'll use Gen AI to increase our own productivity. 

And again, I think that here, when you develop something, when you're in a new area like this, you got to think about, what is your differentiation? And because many people are doing the same thing, and how do you differentiate? So the differentiation that I want to create is in terms of, how do you access the data? Because data is distributed. Data is the lifeblood of AI applications. So how do you create the data pipelines that are enterprise ready? And not only their enterprise ready, but it's like, when it comes to Gen AI, they're like, there's been lot of hype about it, but it's one thing for you to write poems or essays using Gen AI. It's another to write enterprise ready applications. So when it comes to enterprise readiness, you got to think about governance, traceability, scalability, security, also cost, carbon footprint. So those are the features that we are focused on. I think that's where I am, and with that, I will hand it over back to you.
 
Caleb Brown:
Excellent. Thank you so much. Always love getting that kind of full overview of one's kind of journey. And you touched on a bunch of stuff that I'm excited to get into deeper into this conversation, but actually wanted to go back just a little bit rewind, just a little bit, you know, it's very obvious to me, you know, now that you're good at scaling teams and building, you know, very good teams that kind of work together really well. But I'm kind of curious what was that initially, what inspired you to sort of transition from hands on development, like you were doing, you know, or, like I said, the your early career doing Java development, wanting to move into the more leadership roles, they're kind of taking that jump, maybe before you've, you know, you've actually done it, that initial switch. I'm just kind of curious what, what really drove you to want to.
 
Bharti Patel:
That’s a very interesting question, and I'm glad that you touched upon that. So I'm kind of, it's kind of, I'm going, I'm having a flashback there. So I joined, as I said, when I joined IBM in India, we were very small, and we were only recruiting from the best of the best institutes. So actually, the people were so good. And it's like they all have done very well in the industry. So we were recruiting from the premier Institute, and they were so good that they would actually fire the manager, meaning, if the manager was not good. So it's kind of interesting. So it's not that the fire, but they were so capable, so confident that if manager is not up to live up to their standards, they would go and complain. 

So we saw three managers come and go, and after that, my management team, they came to me and they said, Hey, yo, we know you are a technical resource, but would you consider moving into management? And I was amazing. I was part of the team, so I was team leader, but I was part of this the same team, and I said, I ran through them, and I was hanging out with them. I ran through them. They're asking me to move into management. They said, Hey, don't do that. People don't have respect for managers. And that struck with me and kind of well, you know, it's people don't have respect for bad managers. But you in technology, you do need leaders who are able to to UN. Reach the potential of very talented people. And I kind of thought over, thought over, actually, for 24 hours, and I did say yes to it. In fact, that means I enter into management very early in my career. 
 
Caleb Brown:
Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Always love that, you know, because there's different motivations for a lot of folks within their career and different choices they make, and some that they're unsure of and sometimes regret, and sometimes they're very happy that they moved into it. So always curious on those kind of big ones. But that makes, that makes a lot of sense to me. It does something you mentioned. I think it was in when the last time that we met, prior to kind of doing the prep for this. I think you mentioned the importance of, kind of creating an environment where people jump out of bed ready to come to work. And I just want to ask you a little bit more about, you know, kind of, how you foster such enthusiasm within the team? 
 
Bharti Patel:
Yeah, I think that's very important. And if you want innovate, that's the kind of environment you need. So I think, I mean, it's, it's hard sometimes for people to believe, or people to to believe that, hey, they are not people at the top, to to believe that they don't know everything, and the real action should happen at the lower level. So I think it's very important. But as long as you handcuff the people, you cannot innovate. You got to create that environment where people feel motivated to express themselves, motivate to go beyond the normal course. And they are not afraid. They're not afraid because it means when you kind of make when you are trying to do it possible you there is you are likely to make mistakes. 

So it's not that if someone makes a mistake, then you throw them under the bus. You got to support them, and you need to give them that confidence. And actually, you need to create an environment where people are able to take some risk, they are able to think out of the box, and they are ready to fail fast, fail early, and learn from the mistakes. Because mistakes do happen, but it's not that you can just keep on making the mistakes forever. So you got to learn from them. As long as you learn from them, there are no mistakes. And again, I think we people have an opportunity to really think of the box, because they have that freedom, they have that they know that is encouraged. I think you get extraordinary results.
 
Caleb Brown:
You touched a good bit on, you know, on innovation, and talking about innovation from, you know, kind of your different roles, and certainly your current one. I wanted to talk about that, about your current role, and kind of how you approach innovation from, you know, in a data infrastructure environment, I do think that's a certain, you know, a certain kind of mindset, essentially a certain way of thinking. And so I'm curious how you encourage kind of a culture of innovation within your team? 
 
Bharti Patel:
Yes, I think that's that's fair. Again, it's about encouraging them with it. Kind of, it has, it has a few parameters, right? So first is you create the environment where people are not scared to talk about what they have in their mind, right? They are. They're able to express what ideas they have and they they are encouraged to take risk again. They're also encouraged to look around. They're encouraged to look learn, and because it means, again, the technology moves so fast that if you're not keeping yourself current, you you get dated very fast. 

So you are also at the very top of the latest trends, at the top of latest skills, latest languages, even like means in my team, for example, I encourage them to not and just look at rust as a new programming language which is lot more powerful, lot more a lot more efficient, lot More less, lot less error prone. So encouraging them to look beyond the things, and that's where kind of, when you have a discussion with them, you encourage that particular thing, that, hey, you need to think out of the box. You need to think as if you are the owner. So I also think I kind of encourage, and everyone that I, that works with me, is that, hey, think like a startup, Think as if it's your don't think that. Don't wait for people to tell you. Think like you are a part of a startup, and think like I think like a CEO and see, what would you do to create a difference?
 
Caleb Brown:
Absolutely. Maybe it's because I've been involved in many startups over the years, but that is definitely music to my ears. I definitely agree that is a good way to approach innovation and move quickly and experiment something you said. I actually believe it was on our last call, but I believe you touched on it earlier in our conversation today, you know you emphasize the importance of just exceptional customer experience. Which is certainly something I definitely agree with. I'm interested in how you ensure that kind of remains the focus in a really complex tech products. Because, you know, I believe that you've worked, you know, certainly at IBM, but probably a lot of places in your journey, in your career, of you know, programs, or, you know, systems that are just very complex, and sometimes it can be difficult to keep the focus of customer experience there. So I'm curious how you do it.
 
Bharti Patel:
It's a great question, and it's weird. I actually, I'm a big believer of design thinking, and not the design but design thinking, that's a method like, it's the Stanford focuses on it. You know, most of the institutes focus on it, but it kind of, Stanford was the very One, of the first ones that kind of formalized the process. So that's where I want. I want to ensure that we are working from the customers, right from the beginning, right from where you are defining your use cases all the way up to the delivery and then, like forming customer consoles was very key part of my jobs at IBM. And in fact, when I was in mobile, because mobile was so important at that point in time for this, because it was one of the priorities of CEOs, sorts of CIOs. So in fact, our customer council was as big as 300 customers, and we could work with them, and they will, really, will provide them does, hey, this is what is coming out. They'll provide the feedback. 

And one example I would like to share that means we got really, really great, great, great feedback. In fact, I think getting feedback is one thing, but I think what's also important here, Caleb, is that when you get the feedback, or when they provide the feedback, you hear what they are saying, not you don't hear what you want to hear. So there's a big difference in hearing them versus hearing what you want to hear. So and I'll give one, one of the examples, where, when we were doing the mobile mobile applications, we thought that along with our service, we should have MDM, the mobile device management, that's the security part of the mobile package. And in fact, one of our customers, he gave, he used a very interesting, interesting comparison. And a lot, he said, you know, don't do that, because you have done you yourself installs in 30 minutes, which is a paradigm shift in itself. It's so simple to use. And he, in fact, he used a very interesting analogy. He said that IBM has a tendency to to build coffin for the nail. Don't do that. So I think basically you're selling keep it you've cracked a problem. Keeping it simple. Keep it that way. And then listen, we did not do that. And I think again, amaze. This is just one example, but we many times we change the designs based on the feedback. Yeah.
 
Caleb Brown:
Yeah. So I mean, this kind of expands on that actually, but I was going to ask, especially again, within a complex organization working on complex products, how do you kind of gather, initially, gather that customer feedback in that environment, but also implement it into that product development process. And what about so there's, there is definitely, obviously a huge part of listening to the customer and not putting your own kind of bias into it. But at the same time, especially in the innovation space, you know, there's that classic Henry Ford quote of, if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Just curious how you balance kind of gathering that information in distributing that into your product development process and also kind of filtering it to build the best product? 
 
Bharti Patel:
Oh, yeah, I think that's another very good question here, because again, when you are building products, you're building it for the market. So you want to ensure that you're not building you're not building products for a customer. You're building your products for the market. So balancing that like just seeing, I think you got to meet. There are various ways of doing the heat maps and all those kind of things. 

And like the the requirements based on what is their visibility and what would be the impact, and then we kind of make that decision what features need to go into it like I think the biggest mistake that you could do is take every single requirement that's coming from the customers and then just do that. Then you kind of, you are creating a monster that's unmanageable, so you got to see what could be. But, I mean, it's just, it's important that those kind of things are taken care of. So there are ways to do it. Then you have your APIs available to for customers to extend it, or services to do something on top of it. So while you clear that requirement, but not necessarily, you put. It is a feature in the product. Excellent.
 
Caleb Brown:
Yeah, that makes sense. Of course, on this podcast, we do talk a lot about balancing, you know, technical skills with the soft skills. And something really interesting you mentioned last time we spoke was, you know, there are situations where you do prefer skills over attitudes, you know, in these certain scenarios. And I want to know if you could just elaborate a little bit on on that perspective, because we get a little bit more into talking about the balance. Yeah.
 
Bharti Patel:
So I think, I think when it comes to technical jobs, technical skills are the most important thing, and it's if you really want to, if you really want to create a long, lasting impact. And in fact, if you just want to do short term results, you can do it through marketing. You can do with like, you can fake certain things, right? But if you want long term innovation and you want long term hack, technical skills are very important in a technology company, so when it comes to that, so there might be so I think it should not be confused with that. I like people with bad attitude. No, not like that, but you just got to remember that the people who are really technical, the soft soft skills are not their strength. I would rather prefer someone who can really do great work, versus articulating like a marketer, right? 

So I think that's where, that's what, and that's where the difference come. Now I've seen, like I've seen throughout my career, that some people who are not able to, not very good at articulating things, but they can write the code that no one else can write. So you got to respect that, and you just gone to value that. And in fact, I mean those of people would write the no latency code, and they might have hundreds of pay tests, but they're not the best people to articulate this stuff, and you need that. So I think that's where I say that the soft skills are okay, but they're not the substitute for the technical skills. And it doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean that you tolerate, I mean you tolerate the bad behaviors. So generally, it's not that they are, they're bad behaviors, but that there are some rough edges that you need to deal with it. And as long as these people, these kind of people, are respected, they there's absolutely no problem.
 
Caleb Brown:
Yeah, so I'm curious then, you know, how you've approached, if you have approached developing soft skills in these highly technical team members that may not have it, and also, if possible, if you have an example of, you know, a time that you either defended or supported an employee who was just brilliant on the technical side, but struggled with some of those soft skills. 
 
Bharti Patel:
Yeah, I think only in my career, I did have someone on my team who would only work for two hours a day, and yeah, and rest of that time, he would just enhance his skills. And he was so bright, exceptionally right? And just two hours and but his code could it was the best code. So I think in like in if it was for other managers, they would just say, Hey, why are we working just for two hours? But I didn't. I was just flying with that, because his output was, is still much more than someone who worked for 10 hours. So I kind of I encouraged that thing, that learning things, because I think that was helping. In fact, I used his his approach to even to him, to kind of ask others to do something little bit similar about where they are also enhancing their skills to to to be more productive. 

So that was an example. The other person, I would say, is that I had a very exceptionally right person. But every time you go to him, his answer will be, no, it's a columnist, you know? So I said, Now you so that means I had the conversation with him that he needs to change that. And he did change that. That part, that was another example where said, No, you can't be No, you got to collaborate. And you got to think about, yeah, there are some risks you need to take. And yeah, you know the stuff that will go wrong, but that's not the thing, and you cannot. There were also people. 

At times they were. If they're not, others are not too good. And in fact, even in my current job, actually, if the others are not up to the mark, they will get very frustrated with them. They'll say, oh, no, these people don't have skills. They don't understand. They don't understand at all. But then you kind of got to see that, hey, you need to go with you need to have a little bit patience to to communicate your point of view and listen to them and coach them. So I think having a 111, conversation with these people to talk about what exactly is not working has helped me. So I haven't like so far I haven't found I've worked with very technical people. Now who have got hundreds of patents and have done very well in the industry. I can't remember that anyone who really frustrated me because of his attitude.
 
Caleb Brown:
Yeah, you know, I wanted to make sure that we focused a little bit about sort of, you know, the Gen AI space in general, as you're currently leading Gen AI strategy at Hitachi. Just curious to hear a little bit, just in general, about what sort of really excites you about this technology.
 
Bharti Patel:
I think. So let's just think about a little bit about what happened. So, I mean, AI has been there for forever, like I'm I studied there when I went to school, so it's been for almost 50 years now. But what has changed last what changed last year that this through chat GPT, we really saw the power of AI and I also have to contribute to some other things that happen in parallel. So this was not means this was did not happen overnight. It also was possible because of the amount of data that has been available over the years. It was also possible because of the compute power or and the GPUs that we have. And of course, it was also the parallel architecture of the transformers. So we saw this chat GPT, we got, we saw the power of Gen AI unleashed through very simple natural language interface. 

And that made it that ex that got, it means you you're hearing now from kids, you're hearing from grandparents, and you're just like people are just able to use their day to day life. And that created the entire revolution. And in fact, it had the amount, the 100 million uses it reached in less than two months, which took almost 10 years for Netflix to do that. So now you like, because of the popularity of it. Industries got interested in it, though I have to kind of like just say so that there's absolutely no doubt that there's enormous power here. 

Gen AI brings enormous power, and in fact, it'll become the way of life. It will transform the industries. It has tremendous power to transform the industries. But you got to think about a few things here. Because when you think about the enterprise, you got to think about enterprise features. So again, I think my, one of my favorite things is that, hey, it's one thing to write the poem using Gen AI or write the s. I mean, what could go wrong? But it's another to write mission critical use it for mission critical applications and be here, as you know, these LLMs, the Gen AI is based on LLMs. They are highly statistical nature. So for me, you you got to ensure, how do you ground them to produce 100% accuracy? That's something needed in the enterprise world. So why there is? There's tremendous potential here, also, there's some work that needs to happen for it to be fully enterprise free, and those enterprise features, like security, traceability, scalability, accuracy, cost, carbon footprint, are extremely important.
 
Caleb Brown:
Absolutely. That totally makes sense. I'm curious in the meantime, or as you begin to kind of build on it. And of course, it will expand, and I think we'll see it in more and more industries. But just curious in the present, how you're preparing teams and your infrastructure for Gen AI.
 
Bharti Patel:
The infrastructure that we are building is neutral to what kind of industry it can cater tool so it has the hardware, it has the it has a software layer. It has the data storage layer. But it does not matter which particular industry customers make it build their applications on top of it.
 
Caleb Brown:
Makes sense. Curious. I just have a few more questions for you. But I did want to talk a little bit about, sort of the, essentially the future of tech leadership. And I was just wanted to ask you what skills you think will be crucial for the next generation of tech leaders.
 
Bharti Patel:
I think that's a very good question. Again, I do think that in the coming, in the coming years for tech leaders, one of the skills they got to have, because AI engineer will become very pervasive. So irrespective of what field you are in, you got to have some fundamental knowledge about AI, Gen AI, I think that's one thing. The second thing is also, we will see lot of automation in coming becoming years so someone it would be important to see that, I think, like the leaders who can have a vision to see where all they can automate, because if the businesses are not able to automate, they will be left behind. 

Automation will become very key. So having that vision where the automation will help the businesses, I think that kind of vision is really important. And again, the it will not be 100% automatic on day one, so it has to be done with the human in the loop. So that's fine. The third thing is also the usage of, again, AI, Gen AI to increase the productivity, overall productivity. So again, you don't, you didn't need to do everything using that, but just see where it needs to be applied. Because to be competitive in the business, or to be a competitive leader, you got to think about all that. So I think those are some of the respect your and I'm talking like we're talking about the future. I'm thinking a few years from now. I think these are the critical skills that they will they will need. And of course, now I'm always a big proponent of that, hey, you got to lead through people, and not just just lead prop lead, believing that you know everything,
 
Caleb Brown:
yes, absolutely, absolutely. I have two more for you. One, I'm curious about just your vision for the future of data infrastructure and how Hitachi is positioning itself for the future. Obviously, we talk a little bit about that, but I wanted to look a little bit bigger picture and ask you that.
 
Bharti Patel:
I think in terms of my vision for data infrastructure and how Hitachi is, is the attacking it is. It's, I think we want to give the the world the best infrastructure that's, that's the best from the performance perspective, best from the security perspective, best from the cost perspective, and best from the this cost, social from carbon footprint perspective. So I think we want to give all these features. And of course, we're going to give it in the enterprise readiness for the keeping the enterprise readiness in mind. So we want to ensure that we have the governance and the security and traceability, and I mean, even, like responsible AI part of it. 

So that's another thing that we have. I think that's how we want to differentiate. The third thing that I think we got to we are focused on, is think about the hybrid world. So when, like as I at the beginning, I said that Data is the lifeblood of AI applications, and all the data will never recite in at one place, and data has mass, data has gravity, moving data is expensive. So how could you have insights from the data wherever it lives versus moving it? So that's another part that envision is very important for Hitachi and in in the industry, to think about it, that how do you derive insights from the data without moving it too much?
 
Caleb Brown:
Absolutely makes sense. And my last one that I typically ask everyone, if you could change one thing about the tech industry or its culture, what would that be and why?
 
Bharti Patel:
I think you got to listen to the developers. I If you got to listen to the developers, I think there's one thing I think I very strongly believe in that not every company does that, and you got that they are they know what, what is there. And in fact, listen to them. It's that's very important, and I think that would be my advice. 
 
Caleb Brown:
I think that is excellent advice. Well, like I said, Bharti, thank you so much for being here. I was a pleasure. I really do appreciate it for soft skills, hard code. 
 
Bharti Patel:
Thank you so much. It was my pleasure, and really great questions, great discussion.

Caleb Brown:
What an insightful conversation with Bharti Patel about leading with purpose and building teams that thrive on innovation.

I was especially impressed by Bharti’s focus on creating exceptional customer experiences and her commitment to fostering a culture of quality and creativity. Her ability to bridge technical excellence with people-first leadership is a lesson in balancing the human and technological aspects of engineering leadership.

Her insights into enterprise AI readiness and her three guiding principles—customer experience, innovation, and team empowerment—are not just relevant but essential in today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape. Bharti’s journey from a developer to a transformative leader reminds us of the power of curiosity, resilience, and collaboration in driving meaningful change.

Thank you, Bharti, for sharing your remarkable journey and invaluable lessons on scaling innovation while staying grounded in purpose. And thank you to our listeners for joining us for another episode of Keep Moving Forward.

Join us next time for more conversations with tech leaders who inspire us to grow, lead, and innovate. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music, and don’t forget to share this episode if it resonated with you. Until next time!